Betsy Burleigh is associate professor of music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she has been chair of the Choral Conducting Department at the since the fall of 2013. She served as music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh from 2006 to 2015. She led the Mendelssohn in performances of Brahms’ Requiem, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, and Mozart's Great Mass in C Minorand prepared the choir for numerous performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO). As a guest conductor, Burleigh has led the PSO, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Akron Symphony, and Canton Symphony. Theater engagements have included music direction at Opera Cleveland and the Cleveland Public Theater. She will be preparing the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons in March 2016. Acclaimed for her oratorio conducting, Burleigh’s 2012 Chorus pro Musica performance of Haydn’s Creation was praised in The Boston Globe as an “expansive, poetic reading” and in The Boston Phoenix as “a stirring and elegant, lilting and expansive performance.” Her 2010 rendition of Orff’s Carmina Burana was praised as being both “nuanced” and “hair-raising” by The Boston Musical Intelligencer. She won the 2000 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for best classical/opera performance for Ulmann’sDer Kaiser von Atlantis with the Cleveland Public Theatre and conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus on an Emmy Award-winning concert for the 9/11 Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

Eiddwen Harrhy (guest baroque style coach)

Eiddwen Harrhy’s singing career has taken her to many of the world’s leading opera houses and concert halls. Now her teaching is following a similar path, with master classes and one-to-one teaching around the world, including Prague, Vilnius, Stockholm, Berlin, Helsinki, Utrecht, Vienna, Bloomington, Cologne, and Singapore. Harrhy has been teaching at the Royal College of Music for over 10 years, with her studio including eminent singers and students in the U.K. as well as in Europe.

She has sung with major orchestras and opera companies around the world as well as in more than 20 Handel operas, from Amadigi to Tamerlano, and is regarded as one of the greatest Handel specialists of her generation. Her notable roles include Pamina, Michaela, Countess, Alcina, Poppea, Iphigenie, Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira, Octavian, Composer, Katya Kabanova, Madame Butterfly, and Marie (Wozzeck). Harrhy has worked with many of the great conductors, including Davis, Goodall, Solti, Haitink, Gardiner, Elder, Herreweghe, Norrington, Hickox, Jansons, Minkowski, Mackerras, Willcocks, Pritchard, Hogwood, and Marriner. Directors she has worked with include Peter Hall, Philip Prowse, Jonathan Miller, Richard Jones, Graham Vick, John Copley, John Cox, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Götz Friedrich, Anthony Besch, and Frank Corsar.

She has performed with the leading accompanists of her generation, including Geoffrey Parsons, Graham Johnson, Pascal Roge, Roger Vignoles, and Michael Pollock, appearing in Amsterdam, Athens, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and Vienna. Festivals include Glyndebourne, Batignano, Edinburgh, Halle, Aldeburgh, Geneva, Bruges, Lucerne, and Hong Kong. She has made many notable appearances in the BBC Proms and many other broadcast concert performances in the U.K., United States, and Europe for both television and radio. Harrhy has recorded for EMI, Erato, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Nimbus, Opera Rara, and Virgin Classics, among others. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Swansea, Wales.

The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc. – Handel Underwriting

Through the vision of Georgina’s mother, Louise Addicott-Joshi, The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., was established in 2007 as a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation to provide, among other things, educational and career development opportunities for young musicians and to encourage and support the public performance of music.

- let music flow and surround the world
let humanity be drown in beautiful music -

George Frideric Handel, a German-English baroque composer, was famous for his operas, oratorios, and concerti grossi. He was strongly influenced by the techniques of the great composers of the Italian Baroque period and English composer Henry Purcell. Handel’s music was well known to many composers, including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His body of work includes 42 operas, 29 oratorios, more than 120 cantatas, trios, and duets, numerous arias, chamber music, and 16 organ concerti. His most well-known works includeMessiah, Giulio Cesare, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Because of the variety of musical styles, vocal ranges, and musical instruments used in Handel’s works, it is important for students preparing for a career in opera performance to be well versed in, and comfortable with, singing his music. The Georgina Joshi Fund, administered by The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., and the Indiana University Foundation, was established to encourage and support the student performance of Handel’s operas and oratorios. It is the goal of The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., that Jacobs students be able to study and perform major works of Handel every year.

Through the generosity of The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc., the Jacobs School of Music has been able to produce three fully staged Handel operas to date: Giulio Cesare in 2009,Xerxes in 2013, and Alcina in 2015. Since its inception, the foundation has funded the production of Handel’s oratorios Judas Maccabaeus and Esther, as well as our current performance of Messiah. In each case, the Foundation was instrumental in bringing to the Jacobs School renowned Welsh soprano and Handel expert Eiddwen Harrhy to conduct several days of coaching for the students preparing the performances.

The IU Jacobs School of Music remains grateful to The Georgina Joshi Foundation, Inc. for its friendship and continued support.

Georgina Joshi

A native of Indiana, Georgina Joshi had received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Royal College of Music, London, where she studied with Eiddwen Harrhy. Notably, Joshi had sung for the gala opera night at the Beaumaris Festival with the Welsh Chamber Orchestra conducted by Anthony Hose. She had also performed the role of the first Harlot in Handel’sSolomon conducted by William Jon Gray for the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Joshi was pursuing her Master of Music in Voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Alan Bennett. Her first role at IU was Clorinda in La Cenerentola.